Good Golly, Miss Molly

You have to help yourself before you can help others. That's something that Austin, a sixteen year old volunteer at another social project in town, told me this week. He's staying here at the Healing House with a group of people also volunteering at the same project. He might just be going into his junior year of high school, but he's already got his goals planned through college. He wants to become a champion wrestler and I've seen him training every morning for hours on end to make sure he stays on track with that.

Anyway, that bit of advice really helped me make sense of a lot of what I've been doing here. I've really enjoyed being in a band with Giancarlo, Daniel, David, and some of the other local musicians here. I haven't really performed with them for the past couple of weeks, but I'll say there was a period of several weeks where we had back to back performances every Friday and Saturday night.

I definitely learned a lot performing with them, from the little things, like how to hold a mic well, to bigger things, like how to have a good stage presence and really take ownership of each song. Even just rehearsing with them taught me a lot. It wasn't always easy. I'll say my Spanish is definitely more than decent, but it was quite a challenge to keep up with what people were saying to each other. Musical jargon definitely doesn't translate so readily. Still, it was so cool to watch them communicate with little to no use of sheet music or any notation at all. These guys could harmonize songs at the drop of a hat. It was really impressive.

Giancarlo and I in the kitchen practicing some songs

Pouring so much of my efforts into my own performance skills sort of caused an inner conflict because I really intended to come here to teach music and help others get better. So, when Austin shared that bit of wisdom with me, I really felt some of my questions were answered. The farther along I get with my own music and the better of a musician I become the better of a music teacher I'll be and the farther I can take my students. That means though that I've got to help myself before I can help others. I do feel like I did indeed. I made a lot of mistakes in performances and there was definitely some miscommunication every now and then about who was going to come in next or what have you. I grew a lot from making those mistakes and being more clear myself about what I wanted to happen.

a Friday performance at the Marriot

Regardless of how perfect our performances were, I think the biggest lesson I learned was about myself and how much I really like to perform for others. At school, I really concentrated on how I was going to teach others, and don't get me wrong, I still love that. But I also just really enjoy singing for other people and being in a band. There's really nothing like just losing yourself in the music and expressing yourself so creatively. Also, I just really enjoy pretending to be Little Richard and I sure like to ball.

Collage

Last Sunday, the Healing House opened it's doors to the public for a creative open house which featured a number of different stations where people could come and let go and express themselves creatively. Some people helped paint our wall mural. Others designed their own fabric prayer flag. Plenty got on the open mic to make music or read poetry. A few whittled sticks into shakers out in the garden. Most contributed to our "Dream Wall" collage. A lucky seven signed up to judge the baking contest.

I'm proud to say that each of us at the House really put our best foot forward and offered what we each could to the creativity festivity. Our planning meeting went really smoothly, and I know I had a great time handing out flyers in the street trying to explain what was going to take place. Still, that terribly freezing, cloudy Sunday morning, things didn't look so good for us. Not only was the weather undesirable, a lot of us found ourselves under the weather as well. I know personally that was the worst morning of the cold that I've got as a souvenir from Qollyur Ritty. I barely felt like doing anything to help set up, and I was even considering sitting this one out.

I was dying, I mean, lying on the bench in the garden, trying to soak up the few rays of sun that finally peeked out at around 11am when Niki, the Healing House founder in charge of everything, asked me to put some music on from my iPod. Before I knew it, I was up dancing and singing to the Elephant Love Melody from "Moulin Rouge" with Kaki, another volunteer here. I just put my whole music library on shuffle, intending to just skip past anything that wasn't contemporary or popular. To my great surprise however, there was an outcry when my Monteverdi's Vespers came up and I tried hitting "next." It was truly refreshing to have people appreciate the choral music I love to listen to, as well as the rock, jazz, and rap.

Energized from all the dancing and singing around the garden, I decided to help paint part of our wall mural. Some girls had already started painting "Sing with me." on the wall. Inspired, I painted my impression of the girl from the Girl Choir of South Florida logo among some other music notes.

I couldn't resist also doing a hand print.

While I was painting, our open mic station got rolling. Several people got up to read some poetry, original and otherwise. I really enjoyed what people read, and I was particularly taken aback by the people who read their own stuff. I know it's really putting yourself out there, and they did it. Feeling particularly inspired, I also got up there and read one of my favorites by e e cummings.

Afterwards, a few musicians got on and really took the show on the road. There was a French man who after some requesting from the house residents, took out his accordion and jammed so well I could hardly believe it. It was something else to see him playing blues and play with the guitarists who eventually came up and joined him.

I would have stayed out listening to them longer, but the baking competition started and who could pass up an opportunity like that. While, I wasn't an official judge I did hang out in the kitchen (to get myself a snack actually, it's an interesting work dynamic, living and working in the same place). I did get to do my share of observing though and give an informed opinion. Well actually, I just goofed around and tried sampling some of the baked goods.

observing Kaki making her amazing chocolate cake

Sarah, one of the other volunteers here, won actually with her strawberry oatmeal bars that took the cake, literally.

our happy victor, in all her shining glory

I admit, I spent the rest of the afternoon soaking up as much sun as I could. The music kept going on past sunset. We had to ask our drum circle to cool it, or else I don't know how late they'd keep at it. Still, it was absolutely amazing how therapeutic it was to have all that art and music around me. I felt so terrible that morning, but I felt a million times better after I got to do some creative projects. Maybe it was just a pleasant distraction from my cold, or maybe it was just the sort of artistic self-expression I had been lacking.